Could Ireland’s most popular garden spray be KILLING more than your WEEDS?

It’s been found liable for causing cancer in the US, and is being banned in some countries, so....

WE EAT it in our food and spray it on our gardens and allotments. It is all over our parks and farmers’ crops. Roundup is Ireland’s most widely used weedkiller and globally the most popular in history.

The product, which was marketed in 1974 by its makers, Monsanto, as a technological breakthrough that killed almost every weed without harming humans or the environment, is now the subject of scrutiny across the world following a $290m US lawsuit which ruled that its active ingredient glyphosate has led to incurable cancer in an American groundskeeper.

Just yesterday, this newspaper revealed that three and a half tonnes of Roundup was used on Dublin’s parks, gardens and playgrounds in the space of a year, prompting calls to phase out the use of the controversial weedkiller in this country completely.

The safety of Roundup — and its active ingredient glyphosate — has actually been challenged since the 1990s by studies that suggest that the weedkiller is linked to serious conditions including liver and kidney disease, infertility, birth abnormalities and cancer.

In the recent landmark case, a Californian jury found that the firm knew its Roundup and Ranger Pro weedkillers were dangerous and failed to warn consumers. Monsanto denies that glyphosate causes cancer and says it intends to appeal.

The claimant, groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, was diagnosed in 2014 with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells that caused cancerous lesions to form over most of his body. Doctors say he may have only months to live.

His lawyers said he regularly used a form of Ranger Pro while working at a school and developed symptoms after he was twice accidentally drenched in Roundup while spraying yards.

His lawyers have claimed in court that Monsanto has known for decades that Roundup is carcinogenic but didn’t disclose it.

Johnson is among more than 5,000 similar plaintiffs with his team describing the ruling as just ‘the tip of the spear’ of future legal cases.

Correspondents say the California judgment is likely to lead to hundreds of other claims against Monsanto, which was recently bought by the German conglomerate Bayer AG.

Friends of the Earth says that everyone who uses Roundup should review its usage in the light of the findings.

Director Oisín Coughlan describes the case as a game-changer and very significant and adds the group has always opposed the use of the substance because of its effect on pollinators.

Use of Roundup in Ireland really took off in the early 2000s, driving up sales considerably.

In 2014, 38,250kg of pure glyphosate was used here, which represents sales of around €12million.

But while there are now more than 20 suppliers of glyphosate in Europe (Monsanto’s patent for Roundup has expired), Roundup remains the market leader, earning it some €1.7 billion a year worldwide.

In 2014, a meta-analysis of previous studies, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found only a ‘handful’ of papers that reported associations between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

COUNTRIES THAT HAVE BANNED HERBICIDE

THE analysts, from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, said much more research is needed to establish whether an actual cause-and-effect link exists between the herbicide and this type of cancer.

Monsanto is fighting the claims vigorously, saying that there is no evidence for a cancer link.

But should we be sufficiently worried by Roundup and other glyphosate weedkillers to avoid using them in our gardens in an all-out ban?

It seems that Ireland is taking direction from some European countries who are deeply concerned about the chemical’s possible effects on humans and the environment. In the capital, South Dublin County Council unanimously passed a motion in May 2017 to ban the use of glyphosate in or close to parks and public areas, and Fingal County Council also began phasing out the use of the chemical this year.

In January, Germany’s government agreed to begin the process of banning glyphosate over safety fears — and in April its agriculture minister said she was finalising a resolution to end its use in household gardens, parks and sports facilities, with further plans to set ‘massive’ limits for its use in agriculture. Last year the Belgian government banned domestic gardeners from using it.

Portugal prohibited glyphosate’s use in all public spaces two years ago. And last November, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would ban it outright within three years.

Such laws have been prompted by evidence such as a study in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology in 2013, which warned that glyphosate can, in lab studies, cause human breast cancer cells to proliferate up to 13 times faster than normal.

Glyphosate seems to act as a synthetic form of the female hormone oestrogen, according to the oncologists at Bangkok’s Environmental Toxicology Program who led the study. They suggested that this can accelerate the growth of forms of breast cancer that are fuelled by oestrogen. Nevertheless, the Irish Farmers’ Association wants glyphosate to be retained.

They argue that the weedkiller is the only thing that makes the